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Generally, I’m fairly up-to-speed on technology.  I’m not in the first batch of early adopters, but I’m generally not too far behind.  I really missed the boat on social media, though, dismissing it as irrelevant for years.  Eventually, I jumped headfirst into blogging.  I’m still not much of a Twitterer – my tweets are mostly notifications of new blog posts.  I’d love to tweet more, but Twitter seems to lose out in the time crunch.

I’m also a Facebook user.  A couple of years ago, I received an invitation from a longtime friend of mine (thanks for dragging me into Facebook, Amy …)  I’m not really a hardcore user, but I do spend time on Facebook when I get the chance.  How do I spend my Facebook time?

Mostly, I look for women who are interested in playing Scrabble®.  Why just women?  Am I using Facebook as some sort of dating service?  No, of course not.  That behavior would be really unacceptable for a married father of two.  However, a significant portion of male players on Facebook are indeed just looking for dirty talk in their Scrabble® games.  This seems quite odd to me – why not simply use the actual singles areas of Facebook?   In any case, this means that I often end up playing games against women.

Technically, I don’t play Scrabble®, but play Wordscraper instead.  Wordscraper is very similar – so similar that Hasbro sued the makers of Wordscraper.  Happily, an out of court settlement was reached, and Wordscraper remains alive.  There’s also an official Scrabble® game on Facebook, but I like Wordscraper better – the screens seems to render and refresh much more quickly.

How good am I?  Sadly, not particularly good.  I’d like to think that I know quite a lot of words, but my strategy doesn’t seem to be very good.  Part of this is probably the fact that I always try to open the board more, and part is just a deficiency of skill.  Who are the good players?  I’ve played a lot of games against Johnny Goodman, and he’s quite dominant.  Gabe Tyndal is really good too.  I haven’t played enough games against Gabe to determine is he’s at Johnny’s level or not.  My chiropractor, Doc Schroeder, is also really good – but a notch below Johnny (who, I repeat, is REALLY good).

Catching up with high school friends.  About half my high school class is on Facebook now.  That allows me to keep up on things that would otherwise elude me.  I’m also the creator of a Facebook group for my classmates.  I enjoy making people “officers” in the group and assigning them interesting roles.  Archduke (that’s me), Countess, Bloodletter, Stable Lad, Arrow Catcher, Ponzologist, we have them all.  I currently need to think up roles for a few more people.

Catching up on my favorite TV shows.  I am notoriously bad at keeping up with TV shows – TV just doesn’t rank as that high of a priority.  However, by becoming a Facebook “fan” of a show, I’m able to get alerts about the show.  Oh, hey, I should probably become a fan of NCIS

Ignoring people. Facebook has a built in chat feature.  Although I’m not as popular as some people, with 170 friends on Facebook, it was pretty common to have a half dozen people chatting with me at once.  That could be a real trick to juggle, especially as I was trying to do other things on Facebook.  I hated telling friends that I didn’t have time for them (seemed a bit rude), so I stay in “offline” mode 99% of the time.  (Hey, if you’re a Facebook friend of mine, send me a “message” – I do read the messages in my inbox and reply.)

Kosmo is the founder of The Soap Boxers and writes on a variety of topics, including the Fiction Friday original short stories. You can purchase some of Kosmo's work at the company store. Like Kosmo's writing? You can leave a tip.

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Comments

4 Responses to “How This Thirty-Something Uses Facebook”

1. Evan @ 40Tech
   March 17th, 2010 @ 1:00 pm

   While I have my concerns regarding Facebook’s privacy policies, I got on the Facebook train a year or so ago. My uses are to catch up with friends of various stages of life – high school, college, law school, and even current friends. I also started a 40Tech fan page, but that is in its infancy. I stay away from any games and ad-ons, because of how Facebook allows those advertisers to pull in your data, and the data of friends. I go so far as to block any updates for any apps like that.
   Evan @ 40Tech´s last blog ..Remote Access Shootout: LogMeIn vs. TeamViewer
   Total Comments by Evan @ 40Tech: 41

2. kosmo
   March 17th, 2010 @ 10:36 pm

   Good point, Evan. Since Wordscraper was a major reason for me joining Facebook, I pretty much had to allow it access. However, I don’t list my phone number and mailing address – no point is getting on more lists than necessary

3. Squeaky
   March 18th, 2010 @ 12:08 pm

   Thanks for the skinny Evan! I have a google voice number, I should put that on my FB because it gives you so much control.

   I too am a 30 something that resisted FB for as long as I could. About a year ago I got online and I always show my chat as offline for the same reason Kosmo. My kids keep me so busy that I find most of the time I get on FB to respond to friend requests then get back offline.

   I need to be better at using FB. Our high school reunion is now being planned on FB. I’m connected with the group as well as several good conservative groups, but I’m not getting everything out of it that I could be.
   Total Comments by Squeaky: 75

4. Cartoon Games
   March 19th, 2010 @ 7:12 pm

   Well everyone and their grandma has FB now. It’s a great system and it’s becoming less of a Social network and more of like a Yahoo now. Games, apps, and more. All they need now is finance and news!
   Cartoon Games´s last blog ..Mario Ghosthouse
   Total Comments by Cartoon Games: 2

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